Pokies determine the outcome of a game independently of the player who spins the wheels. So how to make pokies pay out? There are certain strategies you can apply and some factors to take into account. Read this post to find out how you can increase your odds of winning.
Pokies Payout: Rage Against the Pokie Machine
So you’re sitting at a poker table. You’re getting amazing hands, and your bluffs are working. A lady (or a bloke) is giving you the look, everything’s going great. All of a sudden, goddamn Phil Hellmuth walks in and makes you fold pocket Aces like a little female dog. The only thing you can do is make a sarcastic comment while walking off.
On the other hand, the beauty of playing pokie games is in the fact there’s no learning curve to them. You press spin and you either win or you don’t. However, you can make your own luck.
As we all know, Australia forbids online casinos to base themselves there. However, Aussie players are still welcome in some of the online casinos, which essentially means that the government just forced your money out of the country.
Now, unless you’ve been in a coma for the last 30 years, we don’t have to explain to you how much the Internet has made our lives easier. The same goes for online pokies. Besides not being physically attached to slot machines, playing on online pokie machines provides you with better chances of winning. Online machine payouts happen more frequently than on their land-based counterparts. Real-life pokies offer 80%–90% return to player, while those percentages on online slot machine games are higher, reaching up to 98%.
Return to Player
RTP represents how much money gambled will go back to the player over an extended period of time. It’s not a coincidence we said ‘money gambled’ and not ‘money wagered.’ An RTP of 90% doesn’t mean you’ll get $90 if you put in $100. First of all, RTP is measured in the long run, and it doesn’t really help if you sit down for just a couple of minutes and hit a few spins.
Let’s give an example. Jock from Perth decided to test his luck on some pokies. He put in $200 and didn’t move for four hours. During that time, he spun the reels 2000 times. Jock bet a dollar each time, sometimes he’d win (but usually he didn’t), but he didn’t cash out. In the end, $2000 were gambled during his playthrough, but he lost all the money. So RTP on the money he wagered was not 90% but zero. However, the casino played with $2000 and earned only Jock’s $200. Which means $1800 went to the player, i.e., 90% of it.
Random Number Generator
Random Number Generator — RNG for short — makes the pokie wheels go round. The outcome of any game is determined through this mechanism, which offers you no room to outsmart it.
This is how it works — the RNG spins the numbers in a random fashion. The moment you place a bet is the moment it stops on a certain number. That number corresponds to a certain combination of symbols on the reels, and that’s how they determine whether you’ll win or not. However, RNG doesn’t take into account if you’ve had luck in your previous plays, or whether you’ve put in a lot of money or less than a buck. This way, it remains impartial and unable to be influenced by a player.
You’re Hot Then You’re Cold
RNG makes sure all the outcomes are completely random. That’s the whole point of it. But here’s the trick — a lot of gambling’s appeal comes down to the visual aspect of it. So let’s say you play 100 rounds. Each round you win $10, meaning that, in the end, you’ll have $1000 in your pocket. Now, the fella next to you does the same. Only he loses in 99 rounds and then hits a $1000-worth of jackpot. At the end of the day, both of you will walk out with the same amount of money. But clearly, the second player’s experience is way more exciting — that’s just how the human brain works. Pokie developers know this, and they create their machines accordingly.
The theory is, even random data have trends in them. If you flip a coin a hundred times, you’ll see that you’ll likely get both Tails and Heads several times in a row. So pokies and their RNG also supposedly go through winning and losing cycles. If it’s in a winning cycle, it’s a hot pokie, whereas a cold pokie is on a losing streak. So if you see your neighbouring pokie mate putting in a lot of money and leaving frustrated, you should probably sit for their machine. A big win might be just around the corner.
However, when playing online, what you can do is look for pokies’ volatility. This represents how often and how much the game pays. Highly volatile games pay out big, but they do it less often, so it’s riskier. If you manage to combine high volatility and win, you’ll be singing Songs of Praise.
Online Casino Strategies
Online pokies usually come in three or five-reel designs, with some exceptions. They have multiple paylines, as some games can contain over 250 of them. Also, the more paylines, the greater the possibility you’ll win. But you also need to chip in more money every time you place a bet, so there’s an added risk to it. However, the main thing you can strategise around is how much money you want to bet and what’s your goal. If you put in $0.1 each time, you’ll have fun playing more rounds, but even if you hit a jackpot, the payout won’t make you Gina Rinehart. Moreover, as you’d expect, casinos are not keen on rewarding low-betting players. A lot of pokies don’t allow jackpots to happen during minimal bets in the first place. So if you want to win big, you have to play big.
Ugly Duckling
When they enter an online casino, most players attach themselves to the first game they see. Promoted pokies stand out, especially if they’re branded. Although, those pokies usually come with lower RTPs and no extra features, like progressive jackpots or free spins. So you’d be wise to scroll down and play some of the less popular games. The fact that they are on page 3 doesn’t mean they are terrible.
Pokies which offer great RTP, free spins, multipliers, etc., are great for players. As such, they are not great for casinos, and that’s why they try to camouflage them behind 100 pokies listed before them.
Summary
Pokies are a fun game to play without needing any foreknowledge. Unlike card games where the human factor is very much in play, the question of how to know when a pokie will pay is still on hold. But by choosing the right game for, you can at least have tons of fun while chasing that juicy jackpot.
All in all, make sure you look up which game you should play and the numbers behind it. In the end, it’ll always come down to how lucky you get, but as long as you’re having fun, that luck is bound to come sooner or later, right?